Indian Wildlife Club Ezine (June, 2015)

Bird Watching

Here are four things you can do without moving out of your seat- just by using your mobile phone

June 5th is celebrated as World Environment Day worldwide. At IndianWildlifeclub, we have decided to make a connection to our environment through birds. So what are theFOUR things you can do without leaving your
seat and as you read this mail?

Number 1.

We have three interesting quizzes on birds which can be attempted online (any number of times, till you get them right!)

Next time you see the dancing peacock, you will appreciate this bird of the pheasant family even more. If there is one bird which is so much part of our folklore and music, it is Sarang-The Peacock.

Number 4

Bird watching is a hobby which grows on you. It helps you to spend time outdoors, network with others and opens out a whole new world of nature! Observing birds is now a science called "Ornithology".

Enroll for an online Ornithology Program conducted by BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society). This one year course will earn you a valuable certificate which students can use to explain a gap year when they go for admissions/jobs. With soft skills getting
more and more important while interviewing for jobs, this is a certificate every young man and woman must possess.

A must have certificate for bird guides in Parks and sanctuaries (Get your organization to fund/subsidize the fees!)

Last date of applying 20th June, 2015

Course fee Rs 9990/-

IndianWildlifeclub members get a 5% discount on the fees when they apply and pay online.

Citizen Science

The concealed camera is giving us a whole new view of wild-life, says S.Ananthanarayanan.

Observing animals in the truly wild presents many challenges. It is nearly impossible at night and even in the day animals do not wait to be observed. Sightings, except for rare closeups, thus need to be from a distance
and we know very little about how animals behave when they are really alone. For the same reason, we do not even know all the kinds of animals there are in an area, nor even nearly correct numbers of many of them.

Alexandra Swanson, Margaret Kosmala1, Chris Lintott, Robert Simpson, Arfon Smithand Craig Packer, from the universities of Minnesota, Harvard, Oxford and the Adler Planetarium at Chicago describe in the journal Scientific
Data, a trial with 225 concealed cameras, in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, over a period of four years. The results of the trial are the first of their kind in terms of the discretion of observation, the quality, the statistical importance and also
the quantity of information collected.

We could say that first to systematically catch animals unawares were the trappers. They set traps, concealed pits, nets or clamps that closed when an animal stepped on them, and the purpose was to physically capture
the animals, usually for their fur. Now, the idea of the trap has been turned over, using cameras instead of nets or clamps, to capture images of animals while they move in the forest, undisturbed and unaware, and continuously, for months on end. The way the
camera trap is sprung is either by a sensor of heat or movement, or both, and the camera takes a series of pictures, hopefully to capture images of an animal, a group of animals, animals with their young, a predator, an animal in flight, and so on.

Camera traps have been in use for some twenty years, the Scientific Data paper says, generally to document rare species in understudied areas or to estimate numbers of species whose individuals could be identified.
The second use of camera traps is in fact something like the tracking that is done by fixing a metal or radio tag on an animal or even DNA analysis of droppings, etc. But, with the advances in high resolution, automatic cameras as well as the computer processing
of images, it is now possible to carry out more intensive surveys, of multiple ‘unmarked’ species, the paper says.

Snapshot Serengeti

Snapshot Serengeti, as the survey was called, stationed 225 cameras in a 1,125 square km grid within the protected National Park that lies in the 25,000 square km Savannah ecosystem straddling the Kenya-Tanzania border
in East Africa. The region has large numbers of the wildebeest and zebra, which migrate along with the seasonal rains to the plains. There are also great many other species and the present survey was to understand where and when predators and their prey moved
in the forest, and and to add to an on-going survey of the lion population since 1960 and also surveys of the herbivore population, the paper says.The camera-trap grid spanned a rainfall and vegetation gradient, which would create a direction of movement and
was arranged so that it covered the whole area being studied, with at least two cameras to cover the home range of each major animal species.

The arrangement was first set up in Nov 2010 and has been working continuously since Feb 2011. By the year 2013, each of camera had been in action for 440 days and a total of 1.2 million image sets, each set consisting
of one to three pictures taken together, were created. The cameras were distributed, as shown in the picture, each within a five square km cell, so that they covered the whole trial area. The cameras were mounted, within steel cages, on conveniently located
trees, or posts, and 50 cm from the ground, to get pictures of large animals. The grass was trimmed to less than 30 cm and branches were also trimmed to avoid obstruction or false firing of cameras.

The cameras fired at night mostly with a normal flash, rather than an Infra Red flash, which had been used at first, as the latter was found to yield poor images. But the sensor, which set off the camera, was an IR
sensor, which responded to body heat of the animal, and there were sensors that responded to movement. At first, the sensors were set to ‘high’ sensitivity, but this produced much false triggering, and the setting was fixed at ‘low’. Each time the camera was
triggered, the IR flash cameras took three pictures, but the others took only one picture, as the flash consumes more power. There was also a delay of one minute built in between picture events, to prevent continuous operation if there was a herd of animals!

The data

Dealing with 1.2 million picture sets presents a huge challenge. The pictures were first technically sorted by computers, but further inspection and classification had to be by humans. The pictures were loaded on a
website of Zooniverse, the ‘citizen science’ platform, and the work of dealing with the million-odd pictures was carried out by 28,000 volunteers who came from the general public. Novice participants who registered for the task on the website were given guidelines
for identifying 48 possible species and the software provided for simultaneous and successive viewing of sets of pictures. There was also a faster track for knowledgeable participants. 322,653 pictures were identified as those of of the 48 species of animals,
including rare species like the aardwolf and the zorilla.

credit:SnapshotSengeti

Each picture was also inspected by many viewers and the findings were analysed on computer, to discard identification that was not ratified by others. And finally, a sample of a little over 4,000 pictures was viewed
by a panel of ‘experts’ and the results were used to validate the finding of the citizen viewers. As many as 96.6% of the pictures were found to have been correctly identified.

credit:SnapshotSengeti

The data collected represents an unprecedented set of observation of animals, both from the viewpoint that the animals suspected no outsider, like a cameraman, as well as of the number of close pictures of animals in
action. Apart from obvious value for the study of wild-life, the authors of the paper point out that the method of data acquisition is also without precedent. “The consensus classifications and raw imagery provide an unparalleled opportunity to investigate
multi-species dynamics in an intact ecosystem…….We anticipate broad interdisciplinary re-use of these data sets with applications that span basic and applied ecology, citizen-science research, machine learning, and computer vision,” they say in the paper

Environment Education

You can fill in the application, attach a passport size photograph and pay the fees online, all from your desk!

Here is how:

As you are aware, we give 5% discount to IWC members. To facilitate this, we have made the application available only to those who log in with the user name (email id) and password for http://IndianWildlifeClub.com

You will be prompted to login with the user name (email id) and password for http://IndianWildlifeClub.com

Step III

Once you log in, the application form is visible. Fill in the details online. Do not leave any of the answer boxes blank.

Attach a passport size photo by uploading the photo at the appropriate answer box.

Step IV

Now that the application form is filled in, you are ready to pay the fees. Once you click on the submit button after filling the application form, you will be directed to the payment gateway. You can pay by debit/credit card, Internet banking, mobile
banking etc of almost all the banks in India. Choose your payment option and make the payment. You will receive an immediate acknowledgement once the payment is made. Acknowledgement from IndianWildlifeClub.com will be received within a day or two. Acknowledgement
from BNHS with further course details can be expected in about ten days time from the date of payment.

Important Dates

Start Date: 1st August, 2015
Inaugural Camp: 29 and 30 August, 2015

The inaugural camp will be conducted at BNHS Centre in Mumbai 29-30

August 2015. Following is the address

BNHS Conservation Education Centre

General A K Vaidya Marg

Inside Filmcity

Goregaon (East)

Mumbai: 400065

The accommodation and food will be taken care by BNHS during the camp.

However please note that it will be a dormitory kind of stay with the

basic facilities. Please note that participants will have to bring their sleeping bags

during the Inaugural Camp.

Film Reviews

Many of us have been following the struggles of Ranthambhore National Park, Rajasthan, India, in saving its precious population of tigers. Most of us in the North have visited the Park at least once. All of us have watched HD movies of the magnificent
tigers of Ranthambhore on National Geographic and Discovery. Recently the Park was in news when 'T24' killed a guard and the tiger was shifted out of the Park.

Can we consider the National Park as an island and protect it? This question will come to us often as we watch "Living With the Park-Ranthambhore National Park". Please watch our documentary in English or Hindi and express your opinion on the you tube
channel of IndianWildlifeClub, wildbytes.tv. Needless to say, the opinions expressed in the documentary are those of the protagonists and have to be received as such.

We look forward to see your valuable opinions expressed on the you tube channel. To post a comment on you tube, you need to open an account with you tube, if you do not have one already. Having an account on you tube will also enable you to subscribe
to our channel wildbytes.tv. If you do so, you will get notified whenever a new video is uploaded by us on wildbytes.tv

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCng_XfXfguqI-mX1x1xXdWA

P.S
Please watch the videos on your mobile, if possible. The videos can be easily downloaded for offline viewing on phone. Yes, you can view our YouTube videos even without an Internet connection. Our videos come with an Add to Offline icon (an arrow pointing
downwards placed just below the video). Click on it, the video will be saved on the phone or tablet's storage and you can view it later with even with poor or no connectivity. You can specify that the download happens only over a Wi-Fi connection to save
your data plan. It is available only for Android and iOS apps at the moment.

Our choice from Flickr this month

IndianWildlifeClub Flickr page started in 2005. Over the years it has got 1124 members who have contributed 16.9k photographs. This is a veritable pool of information for a citizen scientist. We would welcome analysis of these photographs from a conservation
angle by our members.

This month we searched for photographs of Indian Pitta and came up with a random list. Following the photographs from 2007 till date, we found that this bird is a photographer's delight whether in a jungle or in home gardens. Just go to https://www.flickr.com/groups/iwc/pool/
and search the photos. Start asking questions? why?, where? when?

The Indian Pitta (Pitta brachyura) is a medium-sized passerine bird. It breeds mainly in the sub-Himalayas and winters in southern India and Sri Lanka. These birds are found in thick undergrowth and are often more easily detected by their calls.

It is an extremely colorful bird with 9 colors on its body (all visible when it spreads its wings). It is found in the undergrowth during the day hopping about.

See below a list of random photographs taken over the years

Hardik Pala August 8, 2014 Hingolgadh, Gujarat, India

Abhijit Joshi June 2, 2014 Tadoba (Maharashtra)

amish patel February 13, 2014 hingolgadh Rajkot District, Gujarat

Mic Clark March 17, 2013 Mullur, Kerala

Shivashankar April 6, 2013 in home garden

Nagesh Kamath December 24, 2012 Joladalu, Karnataka

Yogesh Rane June 3, 2012 Bandhavgarh, M.P

Nagesh Kamath October 30, 2011 Keerampara, Kerala

B.N Singh June 25, 2011 Ranthambhore N.P, Rajasthan

Tarique Sani May 12, 2011 Moharli, Maharashtra

Maneesh Goal May 31, 2010 Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve

Santanu Banik July 10, 2009 Tadoba Andheri Tiger Reserve, India

Amit Mishra May 12, 2009 Corbett National Park , Uttrakhand

Arpit Deomurari June 18, 2008 Kutch Gujarat

Amit Mishra June 2007 Dudhwa National Park -

Though the photographs in our flickr group are mostly from National Parks, the Indian pitta is seen in mini forest areas around Karnataka and Kerala often. Instances of migrating pittas hitting glass doors of houses and falling dead have also been reported
in bird groups.